The Pawn Is Queen
by Medie
Summary: Lauren Reed's life has never been her own...or so she would have them believe.


Title: The Pawn Is Queen  
  
Author: Medie  
  
Rating: PG  
  
Character:Lauren  
  
Spoilers: None really  
  
Disclaimer: These characters do not belong to me.  
  
Author's Note: A Lauren Reed ficathon entry for morgaine22 who wanted background/character analyzation...  
  
Summary: Lauren Reed's life has never been her own...or so she would have them believe.  
  
"The Pawn Is Queen"  
by M.  
-------  
  
Lauren always knew her life was never going to be like anyone else's. That she was never going to be like the little girls in her play groups or the ones she saw on tv. Their life, she knew intrinsically, was never going to be her life. Oh, she was going to go to the same things they did, she would take ballet, and then gymnastics, and be a cheerleader, and attend the appropriate colleges and live the debutante life like they did... She did all of it and then some and she excelled at it. She was the perfect ballerina, star of the show, she was the head cheerleader and dated the quarterback, and she excelled in her college life. She had no other choice. But she was nothing like them...  
  
She'd known from the beginning the one thing they pretended not to. That it was a lie. An illusion. Perfectly constructed to present a flawless deception.  
  
The only difference was...Lauren's lie was a lie with a purpose.  
  
For every lesson, every activity, there was a purpose. Her mother chose each and every one to serve a specific need. Ballet provided her the discipline and control of her body she would need later in life. Taught her to push past pain to achieve her goals. Gymnastics was the same. She learned how to move, learned agility, and grace. Economy of movement was a necessity. Her cheerleading skills again did the same. She learned a familiarity with her own body that gave her added control when the true lessons began. The lessons in hand to hand combat, martial arts, and climbing...everything she needed to know.  
  
The little girl she had been had absolutely no idea what would be so important that she would need to know all these things. How to fight, how to pick a lock, how to bypass a security system...these were things she did not understand and could not understand. She didn't know why her Mommy demanded these things of her. She did know that she didn't want to fail her mother and so, with everything she had, she threw herself into her lessons. She was her daddy's girl but it was her mother's approval she so desperately sought. It was that light in her mother's eyes, the soft nod, the confirmation that she'd done it right and that her mother was pleased...it was that she wanted and needed so desperately.  
  
In later years, she would look back and see herself as willing clay for her mother's sculpting. Olivia Reed had taken her daughter and moulded her into the perfect assassin. An operative schooled in languages, combat, electronics and a thousand other things.  
  
Her childhood hadn't been a childhood at all. It had been boot camp, a training ground for the plans her mother, and her mother's keepers, had put in place for her. She had fulfilled their greatest wishes and then some....theirs but never her own.  
  
She is loathe to admit it, even within herself, but there were times she enjoyed the game of being Mrs. Michael Vaughn. Times when she would pretend to be nothing more than the wife of a former CIA operative turned teacher turned operative again. In those times, she reluctantly admitted to herself that she had dreams, and wishes, that she would never see made reality because they did not fit the plans. Her life is meaningless to them beyond what she can give them. What assignments she can complete, what she can deliver, and there is a part of her, a tiny part, that took the affection Vaughn offered and clung to it.  
  
Something she can never forgive him for. He made her vulnerable, he had power over her like her mother and for that, she hates him. Just as, for as much as she loves her mother, she hates her just the same. Hates what she has done to her life.  
  
Lauren likes who she has become, is comfortable with her life, but at the same time, she hates it as well. Her life is, and always has been, a bizarre duality. She is, and always has been, a double agent of many truths. Traitor to so many sides it is almost impossible to remember which side she began on. Or, if as she suspects, she has been in the in-between from the get go. Never really one or the other, playing both off the middle.  
  
She has no truth other than the one she creates in herself. Her truths are her own. Invisible to anyone around her and the fuel which keeps her going. It is the reality of herself that she clings to, that pushes her forward but she has learned how to draw strength from herself but from others as well. She does not depend on them but she has taught herself how to make their strength her own. To emulate things in them she has not yet built in herself.  
  
Lauren is, at heart, a chameleon and she adapts so very well.  
  
For this, she appreciates the chance to work with Sark. To be with Sark. It's so gloriously uncomplicated in its way and she thrives on the exhilaration of that knowledge. He is, in many ways, an echo of her. They understand each other. They see the parallels in their lives so very easily and know that while she is using him, he is likewise using her, and they are both so very comfortable with this. They are not in love, though in another life they could have been, and they do not have the complicated and twisted existence that is the dynamic between Vaughn and Sydney Bristow. A reality that they are both are supremely grateful for. They are useful to each other and they help each other and they serve a purpose in each other's life, nothing is wasted, but they are not fooling themselves. They recognize the impermanence of what is between them and are grateful for it.  
  
Everything, in a way, is transient for them both. There are no constants beyond the ones they create for themselves. But then, that's the way things have always been for Lauren and she is satisfied with it. She accepts it. It is the only life she has ever known and the only life she will ever know and she does not regret it.  
  
Sometimes, she wishes things could be different but in the end, she knows this is how it was supposed to be. How it's been from the beginning. How it will be until the end. Her life is, in many ways, not her own and it never has been. She plays the role that has been set out for her, moves easily through the intricate dance, another player on the stage. Knowing, in the end, even those who think themselves kings and queens of their strange little world, are little more then pawns themselves. Trapped by the belief they can escape the constraints of the lives they lead, that the secrets of men like Rambaldi offer them the power to do so...  
  
Lauren is no such fool. She knows the truth of her existence, has known it all along, there is no escape, no way to change the ending. But the rules...they are another story entirely.  
  
And, armed with this knowledge, she has achieved what they cannot. She is free.  
  
Finis 


End file.
